Data processing apparatus such as for example Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and mobile communications devices can include a facility for inputting text information by hand-writing alpha-numeric characters on a touch sensitive screen. The alpha-numeric characters are recognised by a character recognition processor. The recognised characters are usually reproduced on the screen in a dialogue box or text input window. Generally, since the area required by a human hand to write a character is larger than an area required to display the recognised characters, the text is displayed in a smaller form, which is displaced from the position where the user is inputting characters by hand-writing.
An article entitled “Stylus User Interfaces for Manipulating Text”, by D Goldberg et al, published on 11 Nov. 1991, at UIST'91, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology pages 127-135 (XP000315073) discloses a text input processing apparatus by recognising hand written characters. The characters are written on a touch sensitive screen. A character recognition processor is arranged to estimate the hand written character, and a processing unit is arranged to receive the estimated character and to display the estimated character in the place of the hand written character on the touch sensitive screen.
U.S. Patent application No. US 2002/0027550A1 published on 7 Mar. 2002 discloses a computer system in which text is arranged to be input by recognising hand written characters. A user hand writes characters of text to be input on a tablet input grid. The hand written text is displayed on a first part of the computer screen. A character recognition processor generates an estimate of the hand written characters in the form of ASCI characters and reproduces the estimated characters at an insertion point of a word processing document in a different part of the computer screen.
An object of the present invention is to provide a more efficient facility for inputting characters by writing the characters on a touch sensitive screen.